


what cannot be concealed

by patrokla



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Multi, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: It’s not that Jesse’s against that kind of thing, not really. It’s not for him, obviously, but he knows - well, he has a suspicion - that it might be for Cassidy, and that’s fine and dandy. But him and Cassidy? Cassidy and Tulip? The three of them together?or, Jesse comes to some realizations after he and Cassidy and Tulip share a bed.





	1. on the road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [woodironbone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodironbone/gifts).



> To expand slightly on the summary: this explores a slightly alternate universe early season 2, where Jesse starts to have Feelings about Cassidy that he wasn't expecting. It was meant to be a domestic sort of thing and took a right turn into angst almost immediately - I hope there's something here to enjoy despite that!

As it has been said:  
Love and a cough  
cannot be concealed.  
Even a small cough.  
Even a small love.  
  
\- “Small Wire,” Anne Sexton

  
  
On the official first day of the Search for God, Jesse sits in Tulip’s car listening to Cassidy spout off a load of bullshit about foreskins. It’s unnerving, when he thinks about it, how quickly he could get used to this as the new normal. There’s something about it that all feels right together; Tulip speeding down the Texas highways in her Chevelle, Jesse next to her, and Cass sitting in the back, hand occasionally brushing against Jesse’s shoulder when he leans towards the front. Cass talks too much, and Tulip gets them into too much trouble - but ‘too’ is a real subjective word. Right now it suits Jesse just fine.  
  
—  
  
It suits him a little less fine six hours later, when they get to Preacher Mike’s.    
  
“Eddie and I will take the couch,” Mike says gruffly, “You can have my room.”  
  
It’s more generosity than Jesse expected, and frankly more than they deserve, but that doesn’t stop Tulip from looking around with wide eyes and saying “Thanks for havin’ us and all, but don’t you have some kind of a guest room?”  
  
Mike eyes her, then looks at Jesse, who gives him a sort of apologetic wince that he perfected not long after he met Tulip.  
  
“Bathroom’s down the hall,” Mike says pointedly, and Tulip and Cassidy, still spattered with blood from the events of the afternoon, skitter out of the living room.  
  
“You sure about all this, Jesse?”  
  
“I am,” Jesse says.  
  
Mike shakes his head. “Don’t know what your daddy would’ve said about you and those two, but that’s your business. Just so long as you keep it out of my bed.”  
  
“I-“ Jesse starts, face growing hot, “We’re not-“  
  
“Like I said, it’s not my business,” Mike says. “Now if you were my parishioners, that’d be a whole other matter.”  
  
“Right,” Jesse says, “I’ve got some bags to get from the car.”  
  
With that, he flees to the garage, leaving Mike to shake his head in bemusement.  
  
—  
  
He doesn’t tell Cassidy and Tulip about Mike's…assumptions about the three of them, but they’re firmly in the front of his mind when he finally brings the bags into the guest room to find Cassidy staring at the bed.  
  
“You know,” Cassidy says, looking uneasy, “I can always sleep on the floor.”  
  
“You’re not sleepin’ on the floor, Cass,” Tulip says from where she’s sitting on the duvet. “If we’re sharing a room then we might as well share the bed.”  
  
“Right,” Cassidy says, “and how d’you feel about that, padre?”  
  
“I’m gonna go for a smoke,” Jesse mutters, and for the second time in thirty minutes, he finds himself loitering outside Mike’s house like a kid outside of a convenience store.  
  
—  
  
It’s not that Jesse’s against that kind of thing, not really. It’s not for him, obviously, but he knows - well, he has a suspicion - that it might be for Cassidy, and that’s fine and dandy. But him and Cassidy? Cassidy and Tulip? The three of them together? He’s not even sure how that last one would work, mechanically.  
  
No, it’s just not something that makes any sense, and he doesn’t know what gave Mike the impression that Jesse was like that and the three of them were-  
  
Outside, alone except for Ashleigh’s occasional pleas for her phone, his face burns just at the thought of it.  
  
—  
The actual sleeping ain’t as bad as all that, Jesse thinks as he slips out of bed late that night to smoke. Cassidy and Tulip are both blanket hogs, which worked out well for him in the middle. Cass ran cool, probably a vampire thing, which balanced out Jesse’s tendency to overheat, pressed against the furnace of Tulip’s body. Really the worst part of it was the lack of space, and the sheer number of elbows and knees surrounding him.  
  
Well, that and the fact that he and Tulip hadn’t had the privacy to fuck - no matter what Cass had said about the sleeping arrangements in Ireland.  
  
He hears the door swing open and Mike steps out with a glass in his hand. Whiskey, it looks like. He wonders, suddenly, how Mike’s wife died. He barely remembers her, barely remembers Mike, for that matter. Despite his best efforts, that first decade of his life blurs and withers with every passing year. His clearest memory is  still of his father on his knees, gun to his head.  
  
“You expecting someone?”  
  
Jesse shivers, shakes the memory away.  
  
“Just the stars.”


	2. too much wire

God does not need  
too much wire to keep Him there,  
just a thin vein,  
with blood pushing back and forth in it,  
and some love.

  
\- “Small Wire,” Anne Sexton  
  
He doesn’t manage to fall asleep again after Mike’s revelations. He goes back to the bedroom, where Tulip and Cassidy have moved into the place where he’d slept, and seeing the two of them next to each other, only an inch away from touching, makes him feel something he doesn’t have the words for. It’s not quite fury, but it makes him itch under the skin like he had in his and Tulip’s wildest days.    
  
The itch persists even as they get back on the road, and through the conversation with Tammy that ends, to put it mildly, abruptly. It’s Cassidy’s fault, but not technically, and not really. Like so many mistakes Jesse’s made and seen made, it’s just bad luck. He used to think that maybe that kind of luck was a hint from God. Now he knows better.  
  
So he’s not angry at Cassidy, not really, but when he goes into the motel lobby by himself and asks for two rooms, it feels a little vindictive. A little petty.  
  
It shouldn’t. It’s two rooms, and it’s two rooms specifically so he and Tulip can get a little goddamn privacy. And that’s all it is.  
  
Still, when he hands Cass his own room key at the door, there’s a tension he doesn’t like.  
  
—  
  
There’s a euphemism Jesse’s heard, ‘a roll in the hay.’ He didn’t see much hay growing up, but he likes the imagery of it, the movement and the joy of it.  
  
What he and Tulip do goes far beyond hay and rolling in it. They’ve left a string of shattered lamps and broken beds in motel rooms across the Southwest, and he can’t recall ever feeling particularly bad about it. He likes to see the mark they leave, no matter how impermanent. The broken doors are, he imagines, a lot closer to permanent than the rest.  
  
This time, there’s no opportunity to survey the destruction in the early morning light. He just catches a glimpse as he wakes in the middle of the night and goes to smoke, eyes lingering on Tulip and passing over Cassidy’s door as he walks outside. Then the night erupts into gunfire, and blood, and the return of a terror he thought he’d left behind forever when Genesis chose him.  
  
And then, like mold blooming on rotting meat, there’s the news about Annville. They race away from the ruins of the motel, and Jesse reaches Mike’s answering machine over and over again.  
  
Cassidy’s chatter and Tulip’s relentless silence feel oppressively claustrophobic in their own ways. The radio stays off. God is gone.


	3. mumbai sky tower

So if you have only a thin wire,  
God does not mind.  
He will enter your hands  
as easily as ten cents used to  
bring forth a Coke.

\- "Small Wire," Anne Sexton

\--

Something about Jesse makes all his emotions rise much closer to the surface than they used to. Maybe it's the power, the idea that if he doesn't like something he can change it. He just keeps seeing more and more things that he doesn't like.

\--

Jesse watches Cassidy watch Fiore with an uncomfortably familiar look in his eyes. It's a look Jesse's seen aimed at Tulip more than once, maybe even a look he saw Cassidy give him way back in Annville, when Cass was just good company and Jesse was just a preacher's son.

He doesn't like it, and he really doesn't like that he doesn't like it. It's Cassidy's business who he wants to give stupid looks to, although personally Jesse thinks Fiore is just about one of the last goddamn people on Earth who'd return that kinda look. Fiore's also the last person on Earth willing to help them, apparently, which is just Jesse's luck.

"Listen, Jesse," Cassidy says as Fiore heads to the stage, "Me and Fiore have a bit of history. Let me have a crack at him."

"I dunno, Cass," Jesse says, "he _is_ an angel."

"Oh, don't you worry about that, padre," Cassidy says, winking at him, "Look, I know I screwed up, alright? Let me make it up to you. I've got my own skills-"

"Fine," Jesse agrees abruptly, suddenly needing to be anywhere next to Cassidy in this overheated dressing room. "Just make it quick. I'm gonna go - find Tulip."

\--

The thing about Tulip is that she's the best person Jesse's ever met. She pushes every single one of his buttons, and he loves her for it. He just loves her, period. If he ever finds God he'll swear right in front of him that the only thing going through Jesse's mind when he asks Tulip to marry him is how much he loves her.

He's not expecting the slap, although given that it's Tulip, he really should have.

"I just thought, after everything that's gone wrong for us, it might be nice to have one thing go right," he says, and he doesn't think of Cassidy and those two separate room keys. He thinks about Tulip, and how she doesn't have any family, and he's got no family worth speaking of, and how right it feels to be by her side.

Tulip looks at him from the bed and smiles.

\--

"Look, I love you, you love me, and in the end, that's all that matters," Tulip says, and Jesse's confusion is threaded through with something that's not quite relief.

It's the same thing he feels only a few minutes later, watching Cassidy say goodbye to Fiore. As they get back into Tulip's car, all three of them, none of them any more married than the other, he feels - he sees, somewhere on the road ahead, something strange and enticing.

An opportunity.


End file.
